Category: Homeopathy

A new study by Jeremy Snyder and Tim Caulfield shows how much money is raised by GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sources to support quackery. It's a lot of money, which is unsurprising to Orac, given that he's been writing about how crowdfunding is "baked into" the business model of cancer quacks since he discovered Stanislaw Burzynski a decade ago.

Oscillococcinum, a homeopathic remedy sold by Boiron, consists of a gruel of duck liver and heart diluted away to nonexistence. Nevertheless, recently a California court recently affirmed a jury verdict in a consumer class action deceptive advertising case in favor of Boiron Inc. and Boiron USA. This is why laws, courts, and juries do not decide science. Unfortunately, they do decide science policy.

Dugald Seely, ND (Not-a-Doctor) is a Canadian naturopathic oncologist who's made quite the.name for himself cosplaying a real clinical researcher. What he really studies, unfortunately, is combining naturopathic quackery with real medicine. Basically, he's cosplaying a real clinical researcher, and crappy clinical trials are his props.

The Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan has embraced integrating quackery with medicine in its "integrative medicine" program. But what is it teaching its trainees? Unfortunately, I've started to find out.

Anke Zimmermann is a naturopath in Canada who treats autism who's quackier than the usual naturopath. When last we saw her, she was using homeopathic rabid dog saliva to treat a fear of werewolves. This time around, she presents a "case report" in which she spent two and a half years treating a cranky child with various homeopathic remedies and concluded that her problems were due to the neonatal vitamin K shot. Naturally, that means to her, like any good homeopath, that the correct treatment is vitamin K diluted away to nothing.

Over the weekend, I came across a local news story from Toledo about Chris Tedrow, a patient who was treated at Dr. Mark Hyman's Center for Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. Let's just say that it was, in essence, free advertising for functional medicine nonsense. The Cleveland Clinic should have had to pay the Toledo ABC affiliate to air it.

I haven't written much about Dr. Mehmet Oz and his promotion of pseudoscience lately—or even paid that much attention to him. Unfortunately, this week, that changed as Dr. Oz went all in for astrology. Yes, astrology. The backlash was epic.

Orac has Google Alerts set up for various subjects, such as alternative medicine. This time around, it was a Google Alert that introduced him to "Dr." Raphael Nyarkotey Obu, who shows how quackery is the same all over the world, including in Ghana.